Slocum and the Socorro Saloon Sirens (19 page)

There were no more screams.

The sound of the gunshot filtered up through the floor and he heard its echoes from somewhere below him.

Then he heard the ring and thud of boots on the stairs. Many boots, at least a half dozen. The sounds grew louder.

Slocum tiptoed toward Moses. He reached for the halter and turned the blind horse sideways so that the horse was now between him and the hallway. Moses drooped his head and stood like a statue, unmoving, giving Slocum cover, protection against gunfire from whomever came down the hallway and into the saloon.

He peered under the horse's neck and saw shadowy figures heading his way. The lamps in the hallway cast light on drawn pistols. The first man stopped just short of entering the main hall of the saloon and went into a fighting crouch.

“Slocum, you sonofabitch, you in there?” the man called out.

He recognized the voice. It was Sombra's voice. Two men crowded up behind Sombra. He saw the light glint off the bluing of their pistols.

“Yeah, Sombra, I'm here,” Slocum replied. “Along with Adler. He's not breathing.”

“Bastard,” Sombra spat.

“Get him, Morg,” Roger said.

“Blow the bastard to kingdom come,” Sheriff Degnan said in a loud, throaty whisper.

“I'll get him,” Roger said, and pushed past Sombra.

Once in the room, Roger halted and looked around.

“He's behind that old blind horse,” he yelled. He raised his pistol and Slocum heard him cock the hammer. Roger took aim at Moses and pulled the trigger.

The bullet from his pistol slammed into Moses's neck. It sounded like a flat hand slapping a chunk of raw meet.

Moses staggered a step or two from the impact. Blood spurted from the wound as if the projectile had struck a major artery.

Slocum knew that Moses was mortally wounded and would go down. He backed away, crouched, and ran toward the end of the bar nearest the street. Roger fired at him, a quick shot at a running figure. The bullet whined as it struck a nail in the front of the bar and caromed off to shatter one of the front windows.

Slocum ducked behind the corner of the bar.

Sombra and Sheriff Degnan pushed Roger out of the way and stepped into the room, both hunched over and ready to shoot.

“So long, Roger,” Slocum said in a loud voice. He squeezed the trigger of his Colt and saw Roger buckle as the bullet tore a hole at the base of the young man's throat.

Roger clutched at the wound and blood spurted into his palm and through his fingers. He made a gurgling sound and his legs collapsed beneath him. He dropped to his knees, flailing his gun in the air, gulping for a breath that would never come through the crimson lake of blood that now clogged his throat.

Sombra fired a shot at Slocum and the bullet gouged a furrow in the corner near Slocum's face. Splinters flew and the bullet passed into the wall, striking the adobe clay with a dull thud.

Roger folded up and fell face forward. His pistol fell from his limp hand and clattered on the floor.

Sheriff Degnan screamed in grief as he saw his brother twitch and heard the death rattle in the young man's throat.

He fired off a wild shot that struck the mirror behind the bar, shattering it into dozens of piece that shot sparkles of light on the back wall until they fell to the floor with a tinkling of glass shards.

Moses twisted in a half-circle. His forelegs bent and the horse dropped to its knees like some equine supplicant kneeling to pray. Then his rear end collapsed and the horse fell to its side. Blood from its neck ceased, but there was a pool of it soaking into the floor, bright as barn paint.

Degnan and Sombra, their attention diverted for that moment, watched the horse go down.

They both saw the grisly sight of Gustav Adler, still roped to the dead horse, lying in a grotesque heap, his battered and sightless eyes closed, his arms broken and hideously angled like scattered sticks of kindling.

Degnan's jaw hardened and lights flashed in his eyes as he turned his attention back to his dead brother and to Slocum.

“I'm gonna get the sonofabitch,” Degnan said to Sombra.

Degnan charged out onto the saloon floor. He squeezed the trigger of his pistol and sent a shot flying over Slocum's head. He ran another three feet and fired his weapon again, blind to the danger, so angry about the killing of Roger that he abandoned all reason.

That was a fatal mistake.

Slocum shot Degnan between the eyes at six paces.

The back of the sheriff's skull fractured and exploded into a cloud of rosy spray, bits of skull bone, and grayishblue brain matter. Some of Degnan's brains spattered on the front of Sombra's shirt. He brushed the gristly mass away with his left hand.

“You come on out, Slocum, where I can see you. I got a bullet in my gun with your fucking name on it.”

“Funny,” Slocum yelled back, “I got a .45 slug that says ‘Sombra' on it.”

“Fuck you, Slocum,” Sombra shouted.

Sheriff Degnan made a noise in his throat as his pistol dropped from his hand and he collapsed into a pile of clothing, voiding his intestinal contents into his undershorts. His eyes locked open in a sightless stare. His mouth stood agape and a quiver of leftover nerve electricity rippled down his spine and prompted one leg to kick out then go still.

Sombra gauged the distance between him and Slocum, taking in the body of Sheriff Degnan. Then his gaze shifted to the dead horse and the body of Gus Adler.

Slocum could see only a portion of Sombra's body and the snout of the pistol in the gunman's hand. He had four bullets left in the cylinder of his .45. He also had his belly gun as a backup firearm if he ran out of cartridges in his Colt. But he doubted if it would come to that, and if it did, it would be at close quarters. He, too, looked over at Moses and then at Degnan. Both offered some cover if he made it either place and might draw Sombra out into the open.

For now, though, it was a standoff. Until Sombra made a move, neither man had the advantage. Both had some cover and both were just waiting for the other to make a false move.

There was a lighted oil lamp on the wall just to the right of the hallway. Its flame flickered enticingly as Slocum wondered if he might shoot down the lamp and cause Sombra to come out of hiding.

It was worth a try, he decided. But that would leave him only three bullets left and he didn't know where Scroggs was, nor how many more men were down in the basement.

“What's goin' on up there, Morg?” Scroggs shouted.

An answer to my question
, Slocum thought.

The voice did not come from down in the basement, but from a room somewhere down the hall.

“I got Slocum where I want him,” Sombra boasted. He turned his head to throw his voice down the hallway. “It won't be long now, Willie.”

“Well, go on and kill the sonofabitch,” Scroggs yelled. “Me'n Hiram are right behind you.”

So, Slocum thought, two more men waited close by, down the hall. Linda's uncle and Scroggs.

He looked again at the lamp near the hallway.

Worth the chance? And another bullet?

Slocum thought so.

He swung his pistol to bear on the lamp's glowing glass chimney. He held his breath and squeezed the trigger. His Colt boomed and he saw the bullet shatter the glass, hurling flame, the burning wick, and shining pieces of glass upward and outward. The wick, still aflame, tumbled a few inches. Then its quivering flame began to eat at the wooden floor.

Sombra jumped back, then poked his head out to see what had been broken. He saw the shattered glass gleaming on the floor and the little flame streaking out from the wick in both directions.

“Shit,” he muttered and turned to see if Slocum was still where he had last seen him.

“If my bullet doesn't find you, this saloon will be an inferno right quick,” Slocum said.

He took off his hat and slid it atop the bar.

Sombra reacted to the move. He fired his pistol and the bullet dug a furrow in the bar top. The hat moved as if touched by a gust of wind.

Slocum stepped to the side of the V joint in the bar and fired at Sombra. As soon as the bullet was on its way, Slocum ran toward him in a zigzag pattern.

Two bullets left in the Colt.

Sombra stepped out of the hallway and tracked Slocum with the barrel of his pistol. He fired once and missed. Then he fired again and went back into a crouch.

Slocum swung his pistol to bear on Sombra and squeezed the trigger. Orange flame and brilliant white sparks flew from the muzzle in a stream of exploded and burning powder. The bullet caught Sombra near the bottom of his right lung, and the force blew him sideways just as he squeezed off another shot at Slocum.

The shot went wild, slamming into the ceiling above Slocum's head. Chunks of wood and whitewash cascaded to the floor in an eerie cataract that splattered onto the body of the horse and the corpse of Adler.

Badly wounded, Sombra steadied himself as Slocum closed in on him, running now in a straight line.

“Ah,” Sombra said, favoring his right side and leveling his pistol at Slocum.

Slocum squeezed off the last shot in his pistol. He aimed for Sombra's heart in the center of the man's chest.

The Colt boomed as the cartridge exploded in the firing chamber. A plume of flame and sparks flew from the barrel on the heels of the lead slug.
Whap!
The bullet from Slocum's gun smacked square into Sombra's chest and blood blossomed into a bright red flower on his chest. The bullet tore through his heart, smashing and shattering arteries, burning veins to a crisp, and ripping out ribs before shattering a portion of his spine and leaving a hole in Sombra's back the size of a small muskmelon.

Sombra's pistol slipped from jellied fingers and clattered onto the floor. He fell sideways in a dead swoon, his heart turned to a bloody pulp inside his splintered rib cage. He was dead before his body hit the floor, and no more of his blood pumped from the black hole in his chest.

“Did you get him, Morg?” Scroggs called from down the hall.

Slocum held his left hand over his mouth and answered.

“Yeah, Willie. I got him.”

The fire from the burning wick continued to grow and devour wood. It spread in two directions, then went to the wall and crawled along the base of the adobe. It grew away from the wall and widened its circle.

Slocum opened the gate and began ejecting empty hulls from his pistol. They clanged when they bounced on the floor. He started to feed a fresh cartridge into the cylinder when he heard boots running toward him from down the hall. He shoved only one cartridge in, then pushed the cylinder back into place. He slid the pistol back in its holster and pulled his belly gun from behind his belt buckle.

Scroggs stopped when he saw the body of Sombra in front of him. He had his pistol in his hand.

Behind him came Hiram Littlepage, who was also carrying a pistol in his hand.

The flames from the broken lamp flared up and spread to Moses and shot around the horse's head and stalked Adler.

“Hello, Scroggs,” Slocum said. “I've been waiting for you.”

“What the hell,” Scroggs said, then raised his pistol.

Slocum fired his Smith & Wesson .38 from four feet away. The bullet went through Scroggs's open mouth and smashed his spine in two, paralyzing him even before his heart stopped pumping.

Littlepage stepped toward Slocum, his gun arm raised. Before he could line up his sights, Slocum shot him in the belly.

The wounded man gasped and struggled to breathe.

“If Linda's dead,” Slocum said, “you won't ever see her again. She'll be in heaven; you'll be in hell.”

“Damn you, Slocum,” Littlepage groaned as blood seeped through the hand that clutched his belly.

Slocum strode to the wounded man. He put the barrel of his belly gun to Littlepage's head, just in front of his right ear and squeezed the trigger. The Smith & Wesson belched flame and a fatal bullet. Littlepage dropped to the floor, dead as the proverbial doornail.

Slocum raced past the fallen man and found the room with the trapdoor open to the basement.

He bounded down the stairs and entered the lavishly furnished basement. The aroma of opium hung in the air. He saw three people huddled against the far wall, and Wu Chen squatted down under a tapestry with a golden dragon sewn into the fabric.

Then he saw Linda slumped in the chair.

He ran to her and drew his knife. He cut her bonds and caught her before her body hit the floor. Her face was covered with drying blood and her beauty buried under that mask of death.

“You all better clear out of here if you don't want to be burned alive,” Slocum said.

Smoke seeped through the ceiling. The women screamed and got up.

Slocum slung the body of Linda over his shoulder and took the stairs two at a time. He heard footsteps behind him, but did not stop to look back.

He carried Linda out through the batwings. The saloon was turning into an inferno. He saw crowds and clumps of people out in the street.

Then he saw Obadiah Swain riding through the throng on his horse. Swain waved at him.

Slocum draped Linda's body behind the cantle of his saddle and patted Ferro on the neck to keep the horse calm.

He shoved the belly gun back behind his belt buckle and then drew his Colt. He began to feed fresh cartridges into the empty chambers when Swain rode up. Slocum holstered his pistol.

“I told you to stay with your brother and Penny,” Slocum said.

“I don't listen too good. Who all's inside the saloon?”

“All the ones I came after,” Slocum said.